Fortune

In the house of Big Business are many handmaidens--Architecture, Engineering, Painting, Etching, Advertising, Interior Decorating, et al. This week they are joined by Publishing, a damsel who has visited the house before but always wearing statistical spectacles, a cashier's eyeshade, a warehouse apron or the plain smock of a trade. This time, for the first time, she came in as fine a dress as ever Publishing wore to wait on the Arts, Travel, Sport, Fashion or Society. And this time she spoke a cosmopolitan language instead of industrial jargon, commercial slang, financial smalltalk. This time her name was FORTUNE, a $1-the-copy, $10-the-year monthly magazine published by TIME, Inc.

Soon perceiving that the newcomer did "reflect Industrial Life in ink and paper . . . as the finest skyscraper reflects it in stone and steel and architecture," readers found out what FORTUNE had to tell.

First article was headed "Tsaa-a, Tsaa-a, Tsaa-a," a phrase cryptic until from subhead and text the reader learned that "Tsaa-a" is the cry of the buyer of pigs in the great basal U. S. industry of Packing, which the article expounded, haunch, paunch and squeal, with impressionistic photographs of the Chicago stockyards in action by able staff photographer Margaret Bourke-White.

Next came "Banking, Group and Branch," a 10,000-word survey, without illustrations, of the prime contemporary problem in U. S. finance. To Andrew William Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, this article had been submitted before publication. Of it, beneath the Treasury's seal, he had written: ". . . interesting and comprehensive. . . . It is appropriate that the first issue of this new magazine of business should devote so much space to a study of this important question."

Then came "Island Kingdoms," factual notes on tycoon-inhabited islands on both coasts of the continent, with illuminated maps flanking the text.

Subsequent features were:

A survey of the glass industry.

A word-portrait of Arthur Curtiss James, "A gentleman funded proprietor, this civilization's best example."

A fiscal sketch of precisely how the Hotel Biltmore makes its money.

Four full-page photographs in the modern manner of what one can see on a trip through the Great Lakes.

A history of Radio Corp. of America, including the Titanic disaster whence President David Sarnoff, then a wireless operator, first came to fame.

A recital, with color prints, of how Color entered Industry (in cash registers, kodaks, planes, pens, skyscrapers), including optical proof that the Great White Way is no longer white.

When readers of FORTUNE next buy orchids, they will know whence orchids came and the economics thereof.

When they hear the name Rothschild uttered, they can turn to FORTUNE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 99-104, for an intimate gallery of that great European banking family of whom Disraeli said to Queen Victoria: "I am of the opinion, madame, that there never can be too many Rothschilds." FORTUNE presented, by tribes, several dozen Rothschilds now living, including one-eyed Baron James, duelling Senator Maurice, fat doctor-playwright Baron Henri (under a parasol, sitting on a dead hippopotamus) and fatter Baron Lionel Walter, who collects fleas.

"Faces of the Month" and "A Budget for a $25,000 Income in Chicago" were self-explanatory lesser features toward the back-of-the-book in Vol. 1, No. 1, where a magnificent forest of advertisements arose. Hearing that a "most beautiful magazine in America" was forthcoming, advertisers had flocked in, most of them with specially prepared copy, until they filled 106 pages and three covers, making Vol. 1, No. 1 a 3-lb., 184-page phenomenon.

In order to avoid the coated, glossy papers which disturb the eyes but which are well adapted to half-tone reproduction, FORTUNE'S photographs are reproduced by the "Intaglio" process--the reverse of ordinary half-tone printing--which works well with heavy, glossless papers. The type used is a reproduction by the English Monotype Co. of the letters designed by the 18th Century craftsman Baskerville. His delicate feat was to modernize and clarify the types which then existed. FORTUNE'S letter has none of the condensation and "meanness" of later type faces.

The size of the magazine is such as to give scope to its illustrations and text without crowding and to permit of the handsome margins characteristic of good bookmaking. About 14 x 11 inches, its dimensions are approximately the same as those of the Saturday Evening Post. FORTUNE'S covers, in place of the usual "process" reproductions in halftone, will be made for flat-color printing, will have the character of original prints.

On FORTUNE'S first cover is a twelve-spoked wheel of the Zodiac, spun slowly against a golden sky by a shapely Goddess of Plenty. The management promised a different cover design in similar vein each month. Among the footnotes (relegated to the last pages after the scholar's fashion) it was told that Thomas Maitland Cleland, designer and typographer, executed the first cover and is the new handmaiden's important adjunct, Art Editor.

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